Control is waste & trust drives value creation

"It's standard practice at many companies to conceal information as a way of controlling employees - a formula that's toxic to trust"

Gary Hamel

Trust is the fuel for any enterprise. Trust in your purpose, trust in your peers, trust in yourself.

Trust drives value creation.

Control is a sign of trust failure. Control does not add value. Control is waste. Control restricts value-creation. It is something management adds when they don't trust their employees to perform as expected.

Lack openness and transparency inevitably leads to trust failure, and thus lower performance. This is especially true in a large organization. The typical reaction from management when trying to deal with such a situation is to strengthen control, to add more rules and to focus on making employees comply to the rules. This typically leads to increasing overhead costs (increasing bureaucracy) and a dis-empowered workforce, which leads to even worse performance.

The greatest obstacle to creating value with Enterprise 2.0 practices and technologies is that radical changes are required to how most enterprises are being managed. If enterprises are to succeed with Enterprise 2.0, we must convince management that it is as easy to build trust in people as it is to control them. We must help management to redefine their purpose, making it about empowering colleagues instead of controlling employees.

“In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts."

Peter F. Drucker